Dark Running (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 4)

by S J MacDonald

  Misha took a moment to screw up her face and stick her tongue out at her friend, then assumed an air of professional decorum as she turned back to Alex.

  ‘I am,’ she reminded him, ‘a Lt Commander. I’ve had all the training, I can run a survival dome in my sleep, I’ve got paramedic certs in case we need a medic, and I am a specialist in evaluating the design and usage of technology. There is nobody here more qualified than I am for that job, Alex – skipper – and you know it.’ She looked across at Simon Penarth, then, clearly as an afterthought. ‘Sorry, love,’ she said. ‘But, you know.’

  Simon looked philosophical. He didn’t actually have an official invitation to all-officers’ briefings, but nobody made an issue of it if he turned up, as he had today, having nothing better to do at the time.

  ‘Oh, well,’ he said, with a friendly grin for his wife. ‘Just don’t ask me to stay,’ he requested. ‘A year in a dome? I’d go nuts!’

  ‘Ah hem,’ Alex said, and having recalled everyone’s attention, ‘No decision is being made here about who stays. We don’t even know if the Samartians would agree to it in the first place, or what stipulations they will make if they do. We are considering, at this stage, logistics. We have an eight-berth dome that we could use, but we should work on the basis of needing to provide all necessary supplies with an ample safety margin, so we’re looking at a team of two or three people. If Mr Taerling is one, representing the Diplomatic Corps, then I do feel that the other, or others, should represent the Fleet – and at a level appropriate for ongoing diplomatic contact, so not a junior officer.’ He looked at the instantly disappointed Subs. ‘Sorry. It’s a question of protocol, and diplomatic courtesy.’ He saw that Tina Lucas still had her hand up with a look of fierce determination on her face, and focussed on her. ‘No.’

  ‘But sir…’

  ‘No.’ Alex said. ‘I know, you’ve already established a relationship, you’ve been on their ship, you have represented us, and with great credit, too. But this is diplomacy, Ms Lucas. I can not, I just can’t, go back to Chartsey and tell the President and Lord Admiral Harangay that I left a newly-qualified Sub-lt to represent the Fleet in Primary Diplomatic Contact. To do so would be an insult to the Samartians.’

  ‘Sir,’ Tina knew that he did not, in fact, have to explain his decision to her – many other skippers would have felt the need to slap her down on principle for arguing a point like that even in an open discussion.

  ‘Never mind, dear girl,’ Buzz told her, consolingly. ‘I know – I’d love to volunteer for this myself, both professionally and academically.’

  Buzz was a socio-psychologist specialising in the study of in-group/out-group dynamics, with an active role in the university world. ‘The opportunity to spend a year studying a world which has been so closed to outside influence would be absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, I have to accept that I do not have the necessary gravitas to maintain stern military demeanour, convincingly.’

  There were some grins, at that, and a good many affectionate looks at him. But it was apparent, too, that the pool of possibilities was shrinking fast. Attention focussed on the senior officers who did not have kids and did have the required quality of military gravitas. And it didn’t take anyone long to realise that that came down to a shortlist of four – Jonas Sartin, Very Vergan, Gunny Norsten and the engineer, Morry Morelle.

  All four were strong candidates. Jonas had rank on his side, as the most senior of them, and he certainly had the cool composure that would be needed in working with the Samartians. Very Vergan, though, had more shipboard and operational experience, including having been in on first contact with Gide. Gunny Norsten was arguably the senior officer they could spare most easily – he had been brought in as a supernumerary astrogation officer to get them through the nebula, but they wouldn’t need him to find their way back. And then there was Morry, also with sufficient rank and gravitas to fulfil the role, and considerable research and development, skills, too, which would be extremely useful.

  And then, of course, there was Misha Tregennis. She was of sufficient rank, at least technically, though she had never served as a Fleet officer aboard ship and all her experience had been in the Second. She could assume brisk professional efficiency, when she wanted to, and as a researcher, her skills would be superb. As she had already recognised herself, in fact, if the question was which of the suitably qualified officers had the best skill-set to learn as much as possible about the Samartians over the next several months, she was top of the list.

  They discussed other possibilities, though – for one thing, Alex did not want to put the slightest pressure on anyone, or seize at an offer which might have been made on impulse, and for another, as they had all come to understand, plans had to be kept flexible, as there was no telling what the Samartians might want.

  Alex did raise the possibility with them the following day. The ceremony itself was quite an event, carried off with all the grandeur and flourish that they could produce, from an honour-guard fighter escort of the shuttle which collected their guests, through the ultra-formal ritual of welcoming aboard, the choir singing the Gloriatzi, the procession to the exosuite and the stately diplomatic protocols.

  The highlight of the ceremony was the signing of the Accord. The Samartians had been given an advance copy of this to ensure that they understood that they were happy with its contents; it was not a document which committed either side to anything specific, but merely recorded the fact that on this day, the peoples of the League and Samart had exchanged greetings.

  In fact, they’d been ‘exchanging greetings’ now for the last five weeks, starting with Leave our space at once or be destroyed, through that first huge step of Who are you people? and on, through all the steps they’d taken since, to reach the point at which they formalised the greeting. There was a very ornate document to sign, of course, which Dakaelin Jurore and Tell signed on behalf of the Samartians, and Alex on behalf of the League. It was with genuine pride that he put his name above His Excellency Fleet Captain Alexis Sean von Strada, Presidential Envoy, League of Free Worlds. At the top of the document was an emblem, showing a four-fingered Samartian hand touching a five-fingered one, hands slightly raised towards one another and touching at the three middle fingertips.

  It was Buzz who’d come up with that, seeing that the issue of salutes and handshakes was a sticky, for the Samartians – who would salute whom first always going to be sensitive, and handshakes regarded as inappropriately intimate. So Buzz had suggested a compromise, a formal etiquette devised specifically for use with the Samartians – half raised hands echoed their hands-up salute, fingertip touch echoed handshake. The Samartians had embraced this idea with rather evident relief, and there was a first, ceremonious use of the new greeting as the document was signed. Things did go a little off-plan at that stage. Having touched fingers with Alex, the dakaelin set about greeting everybody in the exosuite the same way. As there were more than forty people present, representing all ranks, it was some minutes before they could get back to the scheduled ceremony.

  This involved producing two hard copies of the document – in this case, in the form of engraved plaques of bronze platinum. One would be retained by them to be given to their president on their return. The other was packed into a velvet-lined case and presented to the dakaelin.

  They too had brought a gift – a natural crystal, mounted on wood. It was organic wood and had been polished with some animal-based wax. The Samartians had said that they would sterilise anything they brought aboard, but it was apparent that their notions of ‘sterile’ fell short of the League’s. Biohazard monitors in the airlock had detected bacteria in the wax – tiny amounts, but any amount of live bacteria was a concern.

  ‘It is our custom, at the birth of a child, to welcome them to life,’ Dakael Tell said, ‘and tell them who they are. It is a naming ceremony, with a nano…’ she raised a hand and touched her fingers to her neck, or at least, as close as she could do so while wearing a
spacesuit, ‘which will stay with them all their life. We feel that this is the birth of a new life, a new relationship, and so we welcome you, and give to you this nano, with love and hope for a long, proud and happy life.’ Dakael Jurore handed over the crystal, which had an ID nano mounted within it, and both of them smiled – really smiled, allowing the rigidity of their formal expressions to fall away. A naming ceremony, the Fourth would discover, was one of the few times when it was felt to be appropriate for even the most senior military personnel to show emotions.

  ‘You are,’ Dakael Jurore informed them, ‘the Revellin.’

  Alex accepted the gift with proper solemnity.

  ‘I will present it to our President on our return,’ he said, and left unsaid that they would have to fully decontaminate it, first.

  Formal gifts exchanged, then, the usual procedure would have been to provide drinks for toasts, and nibbles to move the event into a social phase. Since everyone was wearing suits, though, they had decided on showing the dakaelin around the exo-suite, instead. It was at this point that Alex raised the possibility that they might leave two or three of their own people at Samart, and at the same time, offered to carry a deputation of Samartians back to the League with them.

  ‘We would be honoured to put the exosuite at your disposal,’ he said, and showed them the cabin which Davie had had refitted to Samartian tastes, now that they knew what they were.

  Jurore and Tell took in the fact that it was set up for four people, and listened closely as Alex explained what facilities they could provide. Then they listened just as closely to the suggestion of a bio-dome being brought through and set up on one of their outer worlds or moons, provided with a holo-link and all the supplies they would need. It was evident that this was not an entirely new idea to them – they, too, had been considering ways in which they might provide some kind of quarantined facility for the Revellin, and whether they should, if invited to do so, send some of their own people with them.

  The clinching part of that offer, though, was when Alex mentioned that they would be happy for the bio-dome to be on live-cam, with footage fed to the Samartian media.

  Misha had suggested that, pointing out the Samartian love of reality-soaps, and the moment Alex said it he knew it had been a really brilliant idea. Their expressions of attentive interest flicked into momentary astonishment, with micro-tells of dawning delight.

  ‘What – like Towers?’ Jurore queried, referring to one of Samart’s top rated, longest running shows. ‘We could watch you at any time?’

  ‘We would require privacy in the shower and bunkroom,’ Alex said, which he knew would be accepted since that was the norm in their viewing, anyway, with a blackout control which the families being filmed could activate at any time they wanted privacy. ‘But other than that, yes, full livecam coverage around the clock, for broadcast at your discretion.’

  If their reaction was anything to go by, being able to watch live footage of aliens around the clock would wipe every other show off the ratings. And The Dome would, indeed, break all viewage records over the next year. Even at that point, though, it was immediately apparent that this was a deal-maker, though agreed for now only in principle, details to be negotiated later.

  Two days later, in fact, when they met to negotiate trade.

  Davie took the lead on that one – as he pointed out, trade-skills were practically encoded in his DNA. He had managed to satisfy Alex, too, that all the deals he would put on the table were wholly ethical even by Alex’s somewhat puritanical standards. So for this, it was Davie who talked while Alex sat quietly, as Davie had told him, nodding along.

  They met Jurore and Tell in the exosuite, which Davie had set up in a new configuration especially designed for the event. The lounge, as before, was set up as an ante-room displaying some of the artefacts they’d brought along as gifts, but the meeting room had changed. The conference table was much smaller and set sidelong to the door, with high-backed chairs to one side for Davie and Alex. On the other was a raised platform provided with seating mats, Samartian style.

  And this, too, was a successful compromise. Conventional Diplomatic Corps thinking and practice would have been to attempt to create a wholly Samartian environment, here, a ‘comfort zone’ in which the Samartians would feel at their ease. Davie, however, was of the view that it wasn’t possible to create a comfort zone, even if you had a detailed image of a suitable environment and re-created it meticulously. There would always be something, tiny mistakes and falsities which would make it feel ‘off’, even if people couldn’t pin down why. And being in an environment that looked as if it should be normal but didn’t feel like it was, Davie said, was deeply unnerving and very far from being any kind of comfortable. A frank acknowledgement that you were in an alien environment was very much better, ideally with courteous consideration given to the needs and customs of your guests.

  So, there was a platform for them to sit on which put them at the same level across the conference table, but mats so they could sit as they preferred.

  It looked weird to League eyes – Jurore and Tell got on the platform and squatted there, bottoms tucked between their ankles but not actually touching the mats. This was ‘formal sitting’, Samartian style, as they’d consider it just as rude to touch bottom on a mat during a business meeting as it would have been for Davie and Alex to sprawl and stick their feet on the table.

  Negotiations began, cautiously, with both sides agreeing that they would consider exchanges under cultural, medical, industrial and military criteria. Cultural was the easiest, in that – the Samartians readily accepted the diplomatic gift-box which included music and a little art as well as the historical artefacts. In return, they offered a similar quantity of military-history exhibits from their own museums, audio recordings and some musical instruments.

  The medical exchange was just as straightforward. Both had agreed that it was necessary to exchange full information medically in order that each could properly assess and manage bio-hazard risk, and they had already, in fact, exchanged so much information that that deal had already been done. All that remained was to agree rules for what could and could not be done with regard to visitors in one another’s care – no taking anyone off to labs to be experimented on, basically, no medical investigations or treatment to be carried out without consent.

  When they got to the industrial criteria, though, negotiations stalled. The Samartians had come prepared to offer their nano-technology, in exchange for artificial gravity.

  This was Davie’s moment, or at least, he was expecting it to be.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, with a nonchalance which in itself highlighted that what he was about to put down on the table was Big. ‘Have you ever considered the possibility of creating plastics from silica?’

  It should have been a moment of revelation, but the two officers looked back blankly at him. After several seconds, Tell gave the gesture they’d agreed as signalling ‘give us a moment’, allowing either side to confer, and did so, turning to Jurore.

  ‘What do we make plastic from?’ she asked, and he looked back at her with slightly affronted bewilderment.

  ‘How would I know?’ he returned, and added, with a derogatory note, ‘It’s plastic.’

  They looked back at Davie, and he burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, seeing that they had become very stone-faced, at that. ‘Forgive me. Exodiplomacy,’ he grinned, reminding them of a diplomatic point they’d made early in the relationship, ‘We have to laugh, sometimes, at the absurdity of otherness – it is without offence, and beyond explanation. So please forgive – and understand, it is not possible for me to discuss this in any meaningful terms with people who do not have a thorough understanding of plastics production. I need to talk to a scientist, an industrial chemist, in order to explain the process we are offering. Is that something that could be arranged? Either on link, or ideally, with someone coming out to the ship?’

  They stared at him.
/>   ‘A civilian?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Davie confirmed. ‘If it isn’t too much to ask.’ He did understand what he was asking, there, as whatever scientist came out to their ship would have to join those in the contact-ship in long-term quarantine. Being there in person, though, seeing things for yourself even in a spacesuit, was a qualitatively different experience from being shown them on a holoscreen.

  ‘We will consider,’ Jurore said – Tell was evidently listening to something on her headset. They were maintaining comms with their own ship, via the hololink the Fourth had established.

  ‘I am told,’ she said, gesturing towards her ear, ‘that we make plastic from carbon and fluoride. We’re not sure what you mean by silica – do you mean sand?’

  Davie grinned, but called up a screen which would be visible over the hololink as well as to Tell and Jurore. One of the first things established in first contact data-exchange was how the other culture classified elements, and Davie had no difficulty using the Samartian version of a periodic table. He highlighted the symbol they used to represent silica, confirming what he meant.

  ‘A purified kind of sand,’ he said. ‘Polymerised silica – siliplas – is the basis of all our plastics production. It is very much safer, cheaper and resource-efficient than your current technology, and we will be very happy to share it with you. But I do need to explain it to someone who understands, so if you could, please, find me someone who understands this…’

  He drew out a chemical formula on the screen, using symbols the Samartians would recognise. Alex himself would not have known what it was – given a translation of the symbols he could have identified the various molecules and the bonding types between them, by digging up memories of high school chemistry, but the significance of it was beyond him. To the Samartians, it was clear, the formula was incomprehensible.

  ‘We will try,’ said Tell, and with that, they had to leave aside the negotiations over industrial tech, moving on to military. This was Alex’s bit, as Davie handed over to him with a deferential gesture.